Category: On love

Surprised by love

Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta Adī-līlā, Chapter 4 describes the ‘confidential’ reasons, for Kṛṣṇa’s decision to take birth as Caitaniya Mahāprabhu. In verse 4.28 Kṛṣṇa declares that he will appear as a pure devotee and carry out pastimes ‘by which even I am amazed’.

It is difficult for us to imagine that God himself should be amazed by anything at all. Isn’t God by nature all-knowing, all-seeing, all-feeling? What could possibly amaze him? 

The answer is as miraculous as Bhakti itself: Kṛṣṇa is amazed by his own feelings.

Indeed there is much amazement in the forests of Vṛndavan. The written prayers, poems and dramas of the closest associates of CaitanyaMahāhaprabhu recount often how many the actors in the divine pastimes—but most of all Mohan—experience surprise.

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Love your neighbour as yourself

Parakīya-bhāva is a key idea in the tradition of Gaudyia Vaishnavism. It describes Kṛṣṇa’s loving pastimes with the gopīs (in the Rāsa Līlā) and with Rādhā herself (in the Gaura Līlā).

In Sanskrit, parakīya means belonging to an other, another group, another tribe, or another people. Parakīya-bhāva is most often interpreted narrowly to mean love outside of marriage. In modern Hindi, it has come to signify ‘adultery’.

But a more broad interpretation understands it as love with a foreigner, an outsider, or a stranger. What can this teach us about love itself?

When, in Luke 10, Jesus is asked what we should do to obtain eternal life, he replies, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul’, then adding a saying from the Torah, Leviticus 19, ‘and love your neighbour as yourself.’ 

A wise listener then asks him, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Jesus famously replies with what is know as the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

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I love therefore I am

One of the most well-known philosophical slogans in the West is ‘I think therefore I am’. 

It originates from the French philosopher Descartes, born in 1586. Descartes was trying to answer some of the fundamental questions that face us today: What is real? What is consciousness? What can I know?

Descartes reasoned that there are many things that we are conscious of, but that are not real (white unicorns, castles that float in the air, and so on), but that our mind is capable of doubting the reality of all of them. In fact, he said, everything we are capable of thinking can be put into question except of one: the fact that we are thinking. Thinking, he concluded is the absolute foundation of our being: I think therefore I am. 

Through the eyes of Bhakti this conclusion makes no sense for at least two reasons.

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